Freelance Video Game Journalist

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Leif Johnson (that’s “LAYF”) is a freelance game journalist whose works appear on gaming sites including IGN, GameSpot, PC Gamer, Official Xbox Magazine, GamesRadar, GameTrailers.com, Mac|Life, Playboy’s The Smoking Jacket, 1UP.com, GameSpy, NOWGamer, Gamezebo, and The Escapist. He’s also written video game-related work for American Cowboy magazine. Once a major figure in the cowboy poetry movement of the 1990s, he traveled across North America from Georgia to British Columbia reciting his poetry and working on ranches. Somewhere along the line he got the foolish notion that he needed to go to college, so he went to the University of Texas at Austin where he received a degree in history. He then spent three years at the University of Chicago working on his Ph.D. before realizing that he probably picked the wrong field to spend the rest of his academic career in. So now he writes about video games for a living. True story.

Leif has been playing video games since the days when Pac-Man machines were found in most corner stores, and he spent over two years in the world-class World of Warcraft raiding guild Risen on Alleria. These days, he plays on all major gaming systems, and he’s particularly proud of his “Dalaran University” T-shirt idea, which was a long-time bestseller on Jinx.com.

He also enjoys archery, photography, and medieval history. He and his wife currently live just outside of Chicago. You can occasionally find his work under his full name, “Jeremiah Leif Johnson.”

Want to get in touch with him? Send him an e-mail at esotericus-at-gmail.com. You can also follow him on Twitter or Tumblr.